


hold on to the memories (they will hold on to you)

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of alcoholism, Minor Character Death, Parent Death, Riverdale Writing Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 14:33:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17285897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: The door of the trailer is unlocked, and the handle turns easily under Jughead’s grasp, just like it had the previous day, just like it had the previous year.Future-fic.





	hold on to the memories (they will hold on to you)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first round of the Riverdale Writing Challenge. If you're interested in participating, please visit www(dot)riverdalewritingchallenge(dot)tumblr(dot)com!

The door of the trailer is unlocked, and the handle turns easily under Jughead’s grasp, just like it had the previous day, just like it had the previous year. He can’t remember when the key was lost. There are so many memories in this space that he’s fought, tooth and nail, to forget, and yet they still cling to him stubbornly, wispy thoughts in his brain that feel like lightning bolts when they come into vivid focus - 

So many memories, but he can’t remember what happened to the goddamn key. 

The unlocked door is just how he left it. Just how his father left it. He expects the trailer’s interior to be just as his father left it as well, but rather than a dark, musty space that smells like stale hops, he finds a lamp glowing in the corner, the faint scent of vanilla permeating the otherwise stagnant air, and a blonde ponytail flicking around the living room, following the movement of its owner’s head. 

So many memories. 

“Betts?” he asks quietly. Her name leaves his throat all strangled and rough, like his vocal chords have forgotten what it means to be in her presence. 

She whirls around, ponytail moving through the air. It’s lower than he remembers it being, not quite so tight. There are beer bottle necks between her fingers; the bodies of the bottles clank together gently when she moves, a macabre wind chime melody. 

“Jughead,” she says softly, drawing one pink lip into her mouth. Her eyes are as earnest as they ever were. “I tried so hard to make it for the funeral, but the snow - ”

He nods, his gaze darting away from her face and then moving back again, his eyes moths to her flame. “It’s a shitty time of year to die,” he says dully. “Archie’s in the Alps with Veronica and her mom.” 

Betty looks at him, so fucking _sincere_ he almost hates her. “Ronnie told me. She said Arch said you told him not to come.” 

“Yeah.” Jughead looks down at his boots. “He didn’t listen. Gets in tomorrow. But Dad’s already ashes. So. It’s pointless.” He lets himself look at her again. “Much like this.” He gestures vaguely toward her with one arm. “What the hell are you doing here, Betty?” 

“I wanted to tell you I was sorry,” she says, her voice still soft. “I wanted to - ”

“ _Be here for me_?” he cuts in, his voice too loud, razor sharp. 

“That’s not fair, Jughead.” He watches her swallow, her throat working just above the cowl neck of her sweater: a perfect black, a fabric that looks soft. Her clothes were always so soft. _She_ was always so soft, a contrast to his sharpness - or, at least, the sharpness he used to try so hard to project. “You told me to go, even after I said I would stay. You were the one who stopped replying to my e-mails, returning my calls. You were - ”

“I was the one who realized we were fooling ourselves. That we were on borrowed time, that we always had been. You were the one who never would’ve dumped me, even when you wanted to. Can’t do that to poor, sad Jughead, stuck in a dead-end town with his dead-beat dad.” 

“I never wanted to dump you,” she says, with that good old Betty Cooper ferocity, her eyes going that forest-y green that he used to know conveyed anger. “You were going to come to the city, too, once you had a chance to save enough money. _That’s_ what I wanted.” 

“It’s been five fucking years, Betts,” he tells her simply, without much heat. He holds his arms out to either side of his body. “Still haven’t had that chance to save all that money.” 

“It’s not too late,” she says, and when he scoffs, adds, “It’s _not_. I know we should have had this conversation earlier. I - it’s something I regret, that we didn’t. But I also knew that - I knew you weren’t going to leave him. That’s not the kind of person you are. And I respected that; your loyalty, your love for him. And I was… we were both young, and I didn’t know how to tell you that it was okay to leave without making you angry.” 

“So you came to do it now? Now that he drank himself to death, you came to tell me that I’m free to live out the grand plans you had for me in high sch - ”

“ _No_ ,” she interrupts, and he can hear frustration bubbling into her mouth, leaking into her words. “I came here so that you wouldn’t have to do _this_ alone.” With bottles still in her hands, she gestures to the misery that surrounds them: threadbare couch, plates caked with food, a television with rabbit ears perched precariously atop it, markers of a man whose only comfort was found in a bottle, who rarely did the dishes, who forgot to pay the cable bill. 

Slowly, he nods, and steps forward, his feet dragging; his toes are tingling as the feeling that the cold sucked out of them slowly returns. He reaches for a few of the remaining bottles, but stops short, noting the two tea lights burning on either side of the scuffed coffee table. 

Betty follows his gaze and guesses at his train of thought: “I remembered where you kept them, in your room. I thought… ” She lets the sentence fade away, probably unsure of a polite way to say, _I thought I should find something that gives off a good scent, because it smells like crap in here._

He remembers where he kept those tea lights, too. He remembers the day he bought them, the way he’d been caught off guard by the fact that there were scent options. He remembers agonizing over it briefly and choosing vanilla in the end, because he thought he’d caught notes of it on her skin before. He remembers how it didn’t even matter, in the end, because Betty’d tucked her face right into the crook of his neck and nearly purred in contentment, and it was him that she was breathing in. 

“Yeah,” he says gruffly. He grabs three bottles and carries them into the kitchen, setting them down on the formica table. All he’s doing is moving the mess from one place to another, but the kitchen seems like the right place for a bottle. 

He looks around and feels his heart sink; the kitchen is a disaster zone, potentially even a biohazard. Since he got an apartment of his own, he hadn’t been back here much. FP hadn’t wanted him around. He saw his father most often at the Wyrm, where, he supposes, FP probably thought it was more acceptable to be drunk and disorderly. 

He hates his dad. 

He _misses_ his dad. 

He misses his dad, and he hates his dad, and he had no idea how to help his dad, could never quite manage to _fix_ his dad. He was so stupidly helpless sometimes when it came to his father, just like he’s stupidly helpless staring down this messy kitchen. 

Jughead doesn’t know where to begin, but he has a sneaking suspicion that Betty does. 

( _You’re the child, Juggie_ , she used to say to him, her eyes wide with that quintessential earnestness of hers. _You’re supposed to be_ his _job._

Which was all well and good, and he would tell her as much - but FP’s own father had never done much parenting, and _someone_ had to step in, and the only someone around was Jughead. 

She would always take his beanie off after those conversations, slip her fingers into his hair, scratch lightly, soothingly at his scalp, and Jughead would put his head on her chest and listen to the beat of her heart, and he would not cry.)

He jumps slightly, his mind pulled back to the present by Betty’s fingers, which are curling slowly around his elbow, a gesture that starts off tentative but builds into something more certain. He swears he can feel the warmth of her hand, even through the leather he wears like a second skin. 

“Tomorrow’s a new day, Juggie,” she says, voice nothing more than a murmur with the cadence of a promise. 

And he nods, and for the first time in a long time, he chooses to believe her. 

 

fin.


End file.
